The Jungle Book is a collection of short stories set in the
jungles of India. The first three stories are about Mowgli, whose
father had run from his camp when Shere Khan, the tiger attacked. A
wolf family rescued Mowgli and defied the tiger who claimed him,
prophesying that although Shere Khan wanted to kill Mowgli, Mowgli would
kill him. The pack was hesitant to accept a Man, but Baloo, the bear
who taught all the wolf cubs sponsored him, and the panther Bagheera
purchased his acceptance with a dead cow. So Mowgli grew up with the
pack. He was too small to actually kill a deer, but he was effective
at driving them towards the wolves. As Mowgli became a teenager,
Akela, the aging leader of the pack, failed to get his kill one
night. This is the beginning of the end for elderly pack leaders,
who are eventually killed in their weakness. Shere Khan used this
opportunity to stage a coup. He had been poisoning the minds of the
younger wolves against Mowgli, whose pride is hurt that they cannot
withstand Mowgli’s Man-stare, and the younger wolves cast Mowgli out from
the pack. Mowgli defends himself with fire, and leaves for a village
of Men, vowing that he would return with the hide of Shere Khan.

There is an interstitial story about Mowgli’s training while he was in
the wolf pack. Baloo taught the wolf cubs the Law of the Jungle, and
Mowgli, too, but since Mowgli was a Man, he had to learn a lot more. The Law of the Jungle was how you kept safe from the myriad of dangers,
and included things like passphrases so that different species would not
harm you. One day Baloo cuffed Mowgli for poor performance in his
lessons, and he ran away upset. The monkeys found him, and realized
that they had an opportunity to get him to show them how to weave things,
and then they would be respected in the jungle. (They were not
respected because they never actually finished what they started, plus
they lived in the trees out of sight, so it was easy to ignore
them.) The monkeys kidnapped Mowgli and swiftly took him to a ruined
city in the middle of the jungle, leaving Bagheera and Baloo
panicked. Mowgli remembered his lessons, and asked a kine to tell
Baloo where he was being taken. Unfortunately, the only help
Bagheera and Baloo could find was Kaa, the thirty foot rock python. One monkey would not be a match for a bear or panther, but hundreds of
them made for a difficult battle, which was only really won when Kaa
managed to climb the wall and make an appearance. The monkeys were
terrified of him, and for good reason, as the story ends with Kaa
hypnotizing the monkeys, and presumably eating them.

Mowgli’s story resumes as he enters a human village, where he is given to
a wealthy woman as replacement for the son that the tiger had taken many
years ago. Mowgli starts learning human language, and is given the
task to shepherd the water buffalo with the other children. He make
it known that he is in charge, and he plots how to get revenge on Shere
Khan. One of his wolf brothers visits him, and they make a plan to
warn Mowgli when Shere Khan comes to find him. The day he returns,
Mowgli sees the warning, and has his wolf brother help him divide the
buffalo herd in half, and take them to the two ends of the ravine where
Shere Khan is sleeping. The resulting stampede kills Shere Khan
since he cannot escape up the cliff. The villagers see that Mowgli
can communicate with the wolves, so they cast him out as a demon. Mowgli skins Shere Khan, takes it back to the wolf pack’s rock and gives
the call for a meeting. The leaderless pack had not been doing well,
so they ask for Akela and Mowgli back. Mowgli refuses to come back,
and leaves the pack, forming a small pack with his wolf brothers. Kipling commented that Mowgli eventually meets a girl and gets married,
but that does not come into the story.

The next story is about a white seal, Kotick, who grew up in the nursery
on an arctic island with hundreds of thousands of other seals. The
next year when he returned, he got to hang out with all the bachelors, and
discovered some Men who a round up some seals every year and kill
them. He escaped because they didn’t want an albino seal. Kotick was traumatized by the killings and spent the next year trying to
find an island where there are no Men. He tried several leads from a
seagull and a grumpy walrus, with no success. The other seals
laughed at him that winter, but he searched harder. Eventually he
met Sea Cow (manatees), who were ugly and had terrible manners, and
remembered that the gull had suggested that such a creature might know of
a place. Sea Cow cannot talk, but he followed them, and they led him
to an island with an underwater passage to a beach surrounded by land, and
it was obvious that Man had never been there. He went back that
winter and reported his finding, but no one wanted to join him except one
adventurous female. So he fought them all and every one he bested
had to come with him. That is how the seals ended up on St. Paul’s
island. (Unfortunately, the poem at the end suggests that Man came
to the island and slaughtered most of them.)

After this is “Rikki-tikki-tavi,” the famous story about a mongoose who
happened into an Englishman’s home in India. The family took a
liking to him, and his mother had raised him to behave well around white
people, because living among white people was the height of living. So he was polite and enjoyed himself. He soon made the acquaintance
of the cobra Nag and his wife, Nagaina. It was hate at first sight,
for a mongoose kills cobras and they are natural enemies. The snakes
plot to kill, and Nag slithers up the bathroom drain so as to be able to
kill the unexpecting bather in the morning, but Rikki finds out and bites
its neck, hanging on while the snake thrashed him around. The noise
woke up the family, who was ever so grateful to Rikki for saving their
lives. Rikki knew he had to get rid of Nagaina as well as her clutch
of eggs that was about ready to hatch. He found the eggs, killed the
young snakes, and used that as bait to draw Nagaina. She escaped to
her tunnel as Rikki bit her tail, but Rikki hung on and killed her, too,
dragging her to the trash heap, where the humans saw what he had
done. So Rikki saved the family and lived happily in the house.

The penultimate story is “Toomai of the Elephants,” a story about a child
of an elephant driver. Elephant drivers stay with their elephant,
and the job is passed down from father to son. Toomai’s elephant,
Kala Nag, was a particularly docile elephant, and therefore well liked by
the humans. Toomai liked the excitement of breaking in the wild
elephants every year, but the head of the entire Elephant workforce,
Petersen Sahib told him he would only be able to join when he saw the
elephants dance. Elephants were well-known by the adults to never
dance. One night shortly after this, Kala Nag became restless, and
broke loose. At Toomai’s request he picked him up, and Kala Nag set
off through the jungle. He arrived at a clearing, where hundreds of
elephants stamped down the trees all night to create a larger
clearing. When Toomai and returned, both he and Kala Nag tired out,
the adults at first did not believe his story. But Petersen Sahib’s
elephant had also been there, and showed signs that corroborated what
Toomai said. So he was hailed as the first person to ever see the
elephants dance, and was prophesied that he would be the greatest of all
elephant handlers, even better than Petersen Sahib, who previous to that
night had known all there was to know about elephants.

The final story is a nocturnal conversation between pack animals in the
Indian army. The army was gathered so it could parade itself before
the visiting commander from Afghanistan, but it kept raining, preventing
the spectacle. And the camels kept having bad dreams and panicking
throughout the army. This night they panicked, and it led to several
animals from different divisions discussing the role they had in the
war. The war horse was proud of always obeying his human and going
into battle (although he had been slashed with a knife once). The
mule thought that the most important part of the war was dragging the
mobile cannons through the mountains to get the advantage of
terrain. The elephant, who pushed the big gun until he was too
afraid of the battle to push it forward, was thought a coward by the oxen
who pulled it when he refused. The oxen did not grasp the idea that
the oxen that inevitably died each battle might be them some time; the elephant was able to understand this, so he refused. And the
camel had bad dreams, and got to kneel down during the battles in the
cities, being safe in the middle as the humans shot at each other. The next day the human observer of all this saw the parade and saw the
animals’ places in it, and the Afghanistan commander was very impressed as
the order, as everyone in his country did as they saw fit. His
counterpart in the Indian army noted that it was because they did not obey
their commanders that he had to come and take orders from the British
commander in India.

Kipling always has such rich details in his books that you can almost
feel like you are in India. In these tales, you see life in India
from the perspective of the animals. Even here, Kipling is a great
observer and while he obviously takes artistic license, each animal is
within the character of the animal itself and the Indian mythos
surrounding it. Each animal has just as much a personality a person,
with Kaa and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi being the most memorable characters. Kaa
is never entirely safe, and Kipling skillfully weaves in rumors about Kaa
that inspire a nameless fear in both the monkeys. When we see Kaa
hypnotize the monkeys, the fear is identified, and actually made more intense. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is a playful and cunning mongoose, lovable even in text,
so richly is the portrait painted. I wish more Mowgli stories had
been included, as they are the richest both in plot and in the depth of
the world; they leave you with the feeling that there is a lot more
out there in the jungle and a curiosity to find out what it is. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi is equally good. The others are good, but not as
exciting. Even so, The Jungle Book is a rich fantasy world
set within the real world and will delight any reader.

Review: 9

Mowgli and Rikki-Tikki-Tavi are timeless classics, thoroughly
deserving of a 10. They set a standard for portraits of life as an
animal, with rich texturing as well as excellent and engaging
storytelling. The other two are interesting, but definitely not as
classic. The poems at the end of the chapter are also good, and add
flavor to the story. This is a different sort of fantasy than, say,
C.S. Lewis, but equally well-done. Kipling manages to create fantasy
out of real life, which is a rare skill. His books have a similar
flavor to O'Henry’s stories in that both paint a vivid picture setting in
a concrete historical setting. Kipling goes beyond and incorporates
rich fantasy into that historicity.